{"id":6271,"date":"2015-03-16T07:15:56","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T07:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6271"},"modified":"2015-03-16T07:15:56","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T07:15:56","slug":"last-word-on-the-ref","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/03\/16\/last-word-on-the-ref\/","title":{"rendered":"Last word on the REF"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I'm sitting at my desk in the University of Bath. \u00a0When I actually was employed here, I spent far too much time since about 2001 worrying away about external research assessment \/ excellence frameworks and exercises; it passed for work. \u00a0It seems that\u00a0old habits die hard as\u00a0I've been reading the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ref.ac.uk\/media\/ref\/content\/expanel\/member\/Main%20Panel%20C%20overview%20report.pdf\">overview report<\/a> from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ref.ac.uk\">latest<\/a> (2014) Research Excellence Framework's main panel C. \u00a0This\u00a0oversaw the work of sub-panels for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Architecture, Built Environment and Planning<\/li>\n<li>Geography, Environmental Studies and Archaeology<\/li>\n<li>Economics and Econometrics<\/li>\n<li>Business and Management Studies<\/li>\n<li>Law<\/li>\n<li>Politics and International Studies<\/li>\n<li>Social Work and Social Policy<\/li>\n<li>Sociology<\/li>\n<li>Anthropology and Development Studies<\/li>\n<li>Education<\/li>\n<li>Sport and Exercise Sciences, Leisure and Tourism<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This was quite a task as, however you look at it,\u00a0these are not all cognate disciplines: it's a long way from law to leisure, although not all that far, as it turns out, from sport to sociology.<\/p>\n<p>This is the first passage in the report that caught my eye (page\u00a015 #71)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"Case studies submitted to the sub-panels demonstrated that research is making a difference outside academia to wide range of organisations, groups and individuals. \u00a0It is, for example influencing professional practice in areas as diverse as building design, the pedagogy of primary school teachers, and the training of elite athletes. It is influencing a wide range of public polices nationally and internationally in sustainable development, regulatory reform, poverty alleviation, child protection and many more areas. \u00a0It is doing so by changing the climate of public opinion as well as directly influencing policy makers. \u00a0In some excellent examples the status quo has been successfully challenged and thereby the position of hitherto excluded or disadvantaged groups has been improved.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Good, I thought. \u00a0I was then struck (and pleased) by this:<\/p>\n<p>Page\u00a026 #4<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"There has been a notable increase in the volume of interdisciplinary research addressed at global challenges such as sustainability, carbon reduction and resilience to climate change. \u00a0Much of this research involved collaboration across disciplinary boundaries and the development of mixed methodologies, often as a consequence of significant investment in large interdisciplinary collaborative research projects by research sponsors.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Reading on, I came to this:<\/p>\n<p>Page 27 #18<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"First, there has been a year on year reduction in research funding from all sources for research in this field. \u00a0This is surprising in view of the fact that the science budget has been ring-fenced, the urgent and pressing nature of the challenges facing the built environment, the centrality of the built environment to societal and planetary challenges of sustainability, climate change and human wellbeing, as well as in view of the UK\u2019s world-leading position with respect to research and export of business services in this domain to a rapidly urbanising world context.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>... which gives the game away, of course. \u00a0None of this applies to education \/ ESD etc etc; rather, it's an extract from the report on <em>Architecture, Built Environment and Planning<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>When you get to the report on Education (pages 103 to 113), there is no sign of any such comment. \u00a0The only references to sustainability in that bit of the document are phrases\u00a0such as: \"sustainable, creative and participatory research cultures\"; \"sustained studies of curriculum\"; \"sustained funding\"; \"vitality and sustainability\"; \"sustaining high levels of funding\"; \"sustainability of the activities\";\u00a0and \"the\u00a0sustainability of their strategic commitment\". \u00a0The usual quotidian stuff. \u00a0Actually, the report is replete\u00a0with such phrases.<\/p>\n<p>ESD (etc, etc) seems not to have broken through (yet again) its particular version of the glass ceiling. \u00a0That this is a failure to communicate is obvious. \u00a0That it's unsurprising, similarly so. \u00a0The REF is a game, after all, though not all seem to realise it. \u00a0Looking at the chatter on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eauc.org.uk\/shed\">SHED SHARE<\/a> about this, it seems that there was difficulty in getting institutions to accept ESD-focused papers for inclusion in submissions. \u00a0Partly, this was a question of fit \u2013 that is, papers selected have to cohere around, and contribute to, the 'coherent narrative' (\"story\") that an institution wishes to tell about itself. \u00a0Because of this, good papers in every other sense can be omitted. \u00a0Partly, it must also be an issue of quality \u2013 inevitably, some papers would not be deemed good enough <em>by institutions<\/em>. \u00a0So, if papers addressing education and sustainability issues really have been excluded from the REF, the responsibility\u00a0lies, one way or another, with institutions and academics, and not with HEFCE and its\u00a0panels.<\/p>\n<p>Time to raise the game.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I'm sitting at my desk in the University of Bath. \u00a0When I actually was employed here, I spent far too much time since about 2001 worrying away about external research assessment \/ excellence frameworks and exercises; it passed for work....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}